One giant (unintentional) anti-vax metaphor.

Eh... Yes and no. I'm not going to legitimize anti-vax because we're seeing a resurgence of "extinct" viruses making a comeback thanks to the movement... What people don't want to understand about vaccines is that, despite "anecdotal evidence" (ie individuals' experiences with refusing vaccines), the vaccines in circulation today have DECADES of research behind them. Hell, even the COVID vaccine wasn't just thrown together last minute... The intl health community has been studying the technology behind RNA vaccines since the 90s... They just didn't have a good use case for them until a new pandemic, because in terms of vaccines we already have, which generally have a very low adverse reaction rate, the public health community adopted an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude towards vaccines for other established pathogens (MMR, Chicken pox, etc). And that's fair... But I wouldn't doubt that the use of mRNA vaccines in treating COVID was good enough that they're starting to look at more use cases for it, and I think that's ultimately going to be good for all future vaccines, whether they will eventually replace old ones, or take on new viruses that arise the same way COVID did.

TL;DR the only reason they went the mRNA route with COVID is because it's cheaper, easier and faster to produce, and can be used on pretty much any viral pathogen from now on. So this isn't the last you'll see of the mRNA vaccines. They'll be coming down the pipeline for new pathogens, or as cheaper, equally (or more) effecting alternative to some of the live virus vaccines we've been using since the advent of the first vaccine in the late 1700s. It's time to approach vaccination in a new way, and that's going to be a good thing for society at large, IMHO.